from: Magnolia
List Price: $14.98You Pay Only: $11.99 You Save: $2.99 (20%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM (DVD MOV
EAN: 0876964000017
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Magnolia
Manufacturer: Magnolia
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Magnolia
Region Code: 1
Release Date: January 17, 2006
Running Time: 110 minutes
Sales Rank: 3414
Studio: Magnolia
Theatrical Release Date: 2005
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The inside story of one of historys greatest business scandals in which top executives of americas 7th largest company walked away with over one billion dollars while investors & employees lost everything. Studio: Magnolia Pict Hm Ent Release Date: 11/07/2006 Run time: 110 minutes
Amazon.com:
One of the greatest scandals in American corporate history is chronicled in the riveting documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Based on the bestselling book by Fortune magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkin, and directed by Alex Gibney (who also produced The Trials of Henry Kissinger), the film is an epic morality tale, drawing upon a wealth of insider interviews and archival material to show how Enron, once the nation's seventh largest corporate entity, essentially faked its bookkeeping to report profits that never existed. The corrupt and closely-guarded mismanagement by Enron executives (including Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, later placed on criminal trial) is revealed through such heinous concepts as 'Hypothetical Future Value' (a way of reaping fortunes based on false profit projections) and the use of offshore 'shell' companies to hide the massive losses that eventually toppled the company (along with the venerable Arthur Anderson accounting firm) and left 20,000 employees jobless. As a maddening portrait of hubris and white-collar crime, Enron transcends political and corporate boundaries by showing how smart and powerful men grew blinded by greed and brought ruin upon themselves, along with thousands of otherwise innocent victims. For better and worse, it's a perfect double-feature with eye-opening 2004 documentary The Corporation. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Excellent Doco on Enron Scandal
I was so impressed by Alex Gibney's "Taxi to the Dark Side" (about the Bush administration's own unconscionable actions in the so-called War on Terror)that I decided to check out his film on the Enron debacle, and I was not disappointed.
The collapse of Enron is, of course, a cautionary tale of ethics left behind in the quest for the almighty dollar.
What is impressive about this film is the way the money manipulations are explained so even non-PhD's can follow the trail of fraud. Basically the company used a new form of accounting that allowed them to claim potential future profits as current gains, hiding billions in losses from global investments gone bad.
At the same time, the film also focuses on the culture of greed that flourished at Enron, encouraged at every step by its top dogs, notably "Kenny Boy" (friend to the Bush family) Lay, Jeff Skilling, and CFO Andy Fastow, and enabled by everyone from banks and investment firms like Citibank, Credit Suisse, and Merrill Lynch to the President of the United States.
I didn't know about Enron's involvement in the California energy crisis that allowed the Republicans to drive Governor Grey Davis from office and install the Governator. Again, Bush was involved in the scandal -- by doing nothing to intervene in the chaos that enveloped the state, with energy prices soaring and blackouts taking place on a daily basis.
The film implies, but does not state, the actual cost to the state not ... Read More
Rating:  - Enron DVD
Well this did not work out the way I'd hoped. I could not use the DVD in either my brand new HD DVD player or my older one. Nor did it work in the DVD player at the political office where I wanted to show it either. It only worked on my computer. So I was not able to use it for the purpose I desired.
Rating: - It's a few years old, but NOT out-dated
Don't think that this story is "old" and without relevance. We are all still feeling the effects today, and the same kinds of things are still happening. The makers of this film are fond of saying "it's not a movie about numbers, but about people," and that is true. It's a compelling story, well told, in an artistic fashion.
I've owned this DVD since it was first released and watched it well over a dozen times. I never tire of it, and the bonus features, such as the director's commentary, make it all the more interesting and informative.
Even if you are not particularly interested in business, politics, Enron, or stocks, you will enjoy this movie because it's interesting and well-made.
Rating:  - Bias is an Obvious as the Title
Although this movie does a fair job of explaining what happened with Enron like most of these types of documentaries there's a strong and obvious bias. The title says it all. It blames men for the problem. The supposed "whistleblowers" are all women. The movie relies on these women for firsthand accounts, ignoring the fact that they were right there in the action. They participated in illegal actions, not only knowing what they were doing but plainly profiting. They didn't make millions but were paid several times their normal pay. Likely they're paid to be in the movie and don't see a problem with that either. It's also well known that these men had wives who spent as much as their husbands could steal. The movie and this whole school of thought implies that if women were in charge we wouldn't have these problems. In fact, what has happened is there are two major parties, the rich man's party and the rich woman's party. It should be obvious but the rich women as much as they complain about the rich men don't really want to see their class undermined. Working men have been complaining about these types of things forever and they used to be at the center of the Democratic Party. Now they're most ignored except close to election time. For a working man a movie like this is really a big nothing because they know all this already. The real problem is the refusal of either party to really do anything other than shift a bit in favor of one rich group over another.
Rating: - Lions for Lambs
"Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" is a chilling,engrossing,and surprisingly timely documentary on how a corporation fleeced tons of hard-working Americans and made millions in the process. It starts with ordinary,talented men like the late Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling,as well as an Asian man fascinated by numbers and strippers. They started out as entrepreneurs; they weren't born with silver spoons. In retrospect,it's fascinating to see their ads depicting Enron as an innovative company bringing light to the world.
"Enron" shows the consequences of following Gordon Gecko's "Greed is good" motto. Lay, Skilling, and his associates began to consider themselves above the law. They created artificial shortages and rolling blackouts. In one chilling scene,employees laugh about leaving a grandmother in the dark while shaking her down for money. There was undisciplined speculation, business at its worst. While the movie plays up Enron's connections with the Bush family, Enron also had Democratic connections,and Democratic California governor Gray Davis let them get away with highway robbery.
When people talk about the hikes in oil prices as "Enronesque",this documentary shows why. Enron played the system... and it paid. What goes around comes around.
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